Robert Stark, a prominent painter who had a home in Susquehanna County, will be honored with posthumous exhibits beginning Friday in Waverly Twp. and later in Carbondale and Union Dale.
The abstract impressionist painter lived in Union Dale and died March 19 at the age of 86 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he and his wife, Elizabeth Stark, also have a home.
A Waverly Community House exhibit opens Friday with a free reception from 5 to 7 p.m. and will run for a month.
The Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Phillips Collection, both in Washington, D.C., and museums in Nashville, Tennessee, and Augusta, Georgia, staged solo shows of his work, according to the gallery Kiesendahl + Calhoun Fine Art in Hawley. He was included in a U.S. State Department exhibit that traveled the world. Stark also showed his work in the region.
A work by Robert Stark. (COURTESY OF THE WAVERLY COMMUNITY HOUSE)
A collection of articles about artist Robert Stark. (COURTESY OF DONNA MARIE FOSTER MURPHY)
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A work by Robert Stark. (COURTESY OF THE WAVERLY COMMUNITY HOUSE)
“What I liked about his work is that you could just lose yourself by looking at it and you could look at it over and over and over and depending on the day and your mood, it would speak to you differently,” said Donna Marie Murphy-Foster, interim director of the Susquehanna Studio Art Exchange in Union Dale. He began as a photographer and changed his style and medium many times, she said.
Stark founded the Susquehanna Studio Art Exchange.
Gia Tugend, executive director of the Waverly Community House, said his landscape-inspired work is eye-catching, vibrant and colorful. The Community House awarded Stark the $10,000 F. Lammot Belin Arts Scholarship in 1988.
The Susquehanna Studio Art Exchange will host a celebration of his life Aug. 29 and open an exhibit that will run through September.
Carbondale’s Second Saturday series, a monthly evening of arts activities in several locations, will feature his work on July 11 from 5-8 p.m. at the Carbondale Chamber of Commerce on Main Street.